Tag: Delmira Agustini

Agustini was part of the Uruguayan generation of 1900 along with María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira, Julio Herrera y Reissig, Leopoldo Lugones, and Rubén Darío; and was also considered part of the “generation of the Río de la Plata” of 1910-1920 (Camps 6). She was close to the Argentine writer Manuel Ugarte and to María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira. Early in her career, poets and critics like Juan Zorrilla de San Martin and Carlos Vaz Ferreira called her “The baby muse” and played up the image of her as a chaste, virginal child. Later, scandal accompanied her image as an artist and poet, her bohemian life and her tragic murder.

In 1902 Agustini began writing a regular column, “La legión etérea,” for La Alborada, a popular weekly journal, under the pseudonym “Joujou” (Rosenbaum 67-68). The column focused on prominent artistic and literary women.

She was considered a modernista, though a maverick “feminine” modernista who, outside mainstream literary circles, was one of “algunas figuras independientes . . . que introdujo una nota de honda y sensual femineidad en la poesía modernista” ‘a few independent figures . . . who introduced a note of depth and sensual femininity into modernista poetry’ (Henríquez Ureña 275). Other critics identify Agustini as part of a movement of women’s poetry: “It was perhaps Delmira Agustini who better represented a certain concept of feminine poetry: a poetry of passion and sensuality, a poetry written to challenge social conventions and to exalt eroticism unabashedly” (Rodriguez Monegal 1:368). Critics early in the 20th century often praise the technical perfection of her verse.

Made fierce by love, I’m starving for hearts.Pigeon, vulture, dun deer or lion,no meat tempts me more with exotic flavors.I’d blunted my claws and my primal drives.Then, set up on a plinth, almost otherworldly,a statue dazzled me–an ancient emperor.

And I fed my eagerness; over his stone bodymy desire ascended like ivy lightning, suddenup to his chest, feeding on skin like snow;and I cried out to his unreachable heart . . . sculptureguarding his glory, most chaste, still, and pure,his face towards Tomorrow, feet rooted in Yesterday.

Everlasting my desire; on the stone bodyI’ve stayed pressed like a living blood-filled vine;And since then, dreaming, I devoura statue’s heart, prey worthy of my gorgeous claws;it’s not flesh, not marble: the stuff of stars,without blood, heat, or heartbeat . . .